WORKPLACE FABLES THE RESOURCEFUL MANAGING DIRECTOR AND THE COMMON ENEMY

Mark Price, former MD of Waitrose, shares his workplace fables – true stories from the business front line that can teach us lessons about career success

We hate marketing, confided a fed-up commercial executive. “Why should they tell us what promotions to run?”

“We hate retail,” said a disgruntled marketeer. “We want to run promotions, and they tell us they can’t work to our timetable. Why do they always need more time?”

“We hate the supply chain,” fumed the testy retailer. “They can never give us the right stock at the right time to run successful promotions.”

“We hate services,” griped the supply chain boss. “We need more space to run extra promotions, and they say they can’t build it because they are too busy.”

“We hate personnel,” grumbled the discontented man from services. “We need extra hours to complete the building requests, but they won’t give us the go-ahead.”

“We hate IT,” moaned the irritated personnel manager. “We need systems support to allow us to build an overtime system so that services and others can do more.”

“We hate commercial,” hissed the cranky IT executive. “They never seem to be able to get their act together on promotions and give us a clear brief.”

The Resourceful Managing Director listened carefully and resisted the temptation to put her head in her hands. She knew what to do to calm her warring department heads.

The Resourceful Managing Director revealed that she had heard that their largest rival was planning a big promotional push, and that nobody knew what it was. She indicated that she was fearful about what that could mean for jobs and bonuses, and that everyone needed to get their own plans in place quickly or risk being out-competed.

Feeling threatened by the competitor, the departments stopped complaining about each other, and worked together to counter the unknown threat.